John on Tech...

Today, Microsoft have got around to soft launching their new search engine, Bing! Seems OK although a little bit too noisy for me I find the images distracting but I suppose they had to do something to differentiate themselves from the Google look and feel. But both have a text entry box and some links at the top to select the type of thing you are searching for.

Having played with it I have noticed something though. This was first mentioned in Gizmodo but Boy Genius and others are providing examples although not referring to it directly.

There is an issue when searching news sites with Bing!

The first entry always seems to contain a Microsoft link, irrespective of age of the story. I am hoping that this is a glitch in the initial seeding of data because if it is not then there is NO reason to use Bing! because you will not be able to trust the bias contained within the results.

As I say I really am hoping that this has to do with initial seeding of the search database and not some inbuilt bias from the management.

I was going to pass comment on David Meyer's posting about the Zune Phone but actually went off on one and I am thinking that this deserves a blog posting in it's own right.

Microsoft Marketing are probably rubbing their hands with glee at the moment for kicking Apple when it's "down" (must be a headless company without a "leader"). They also seem to be expressing untold joy that we are in a recession and the money is now flowing to them - those in the "cheap" seats. Having run a series of commercials where Microsoft give people money (not quite enough to buy a Mac) and then celebrate the fact they bought a PC. Hey cool, we're cheap.

They've notched it up a gear now by getting a "financial analyst" to tell people it will cost 'em 30,000 bucks to "fill" an iPod. This is neglecting the fact that NOBODY fills their iPod from the iTunes music store. New stuff maybe, but most have a vast catalogue of CDs which they have ripped and no doubt the youngsters still swap copies of music at school. But hey. They are still trying to sell a Zune Pass - give us all your money and we'll let you listen to some music. All music, well all music we can get the rights to. Cheap shot again Microsoft.

So they seem tragically hung up about Apple. You can imagine Ballmer stalking the offices late at night saying "We would have got away with it if it weren't for those damn Apple kids."

So where are they now? How are your Plays for Sure partners doing, Microsoft? You can just never trust 'em. Last night's twitter telling people not to buy an iPhone or Pre in June coz something new is coming is just SO from the Microsoft playbook. Which usually involves waving big flags when people launch stuff and saying "hey you guys, don't look over there look over here". Meanwhile they never actually deliver.

The marketing team think they have hit a perfect storm attack on Apple where as in fact what they have done is just drawn attention to the fact that they lie. They lie with stats, they lie with numbers but when you strip everything away they just downright lie. They have not won this war and yet they keep throwing money at it.

I have started to wonder if the $3.75 billion Microsoft are raising with this debt offering is actually to GIVE Zune phones to every man woman and child in the USA to stop them buying the damn iPhone?

Not content with failing miserably with the Zune. Not Happy at failing the search field against Google. Not content not being able to get their touch screen device into a box the size of a table. Microsoft have decided to take down twitter.

Mary-Jo Foley is reporting on the American version of this site that Microsoft are set to launch Vine, a "twitter-like" public notification service.

Hmmmm. At some point can't they go back and sort out the problems with the stuff they have RATHER than push out a whole host of me-too products with a ho hum set of features?

Google have used their mapping technology to track the spread of the H1N1 Swine Flu Virus. An interesting use of the technology though perhaps a little scary. If you are interested you can use the following link to see how things are progressing.

View H1N1 Swine Flu in a larger map

There was a blog post that went up today (yesterday - I'm on Florida time you guys are on UK time of course) by a company that was setting up a Microsoft Surface for a customer. It wasn't very flattering. Actually it was so dreadful that I posted on a Mac site that I visit daily to show just how Microsoft doesn't get it. This is supposed to be Microsoft's answer to the iPod Touch / iPhone - too bad it requires SEVERAL cameras and a projector under the thing to get it do simple interaction.

The problem was that the so-called customer focussed features weren't very customer focussed on opening the box. And Gordon Miller, the author of the blog decided that it wasn't really good enough and blogged about it. He was right based on his assumptions. There were definitely issues.

Now I have just been out for a wonderful Friday evening and checked the computer when I got back in to find my link didn't work. So I clicked on the blog entry and found there was an update. A very PRO Microsoft update had replaced the original posting.

But worse still the original article had been removed.

So Marketing had obviously kicked in and decided the world wasn't ready for the things Gordon Miller had to say about their wonderful toy and got him to rewrite it.

You know what? This is the Internet and this sort of stuff SHOULDN'T happen. So for your edification here is a link to the Google Cache of the original article:

Here

And if that goes down here is a link to a pdf of the original article:

Here

And here is a link to the sanitized version:

Here

But probably isn't worth the effort as it seems to have Microsoft Marketing written all over it. BTW Microsoft Marketing here is an interesting aside. It's nice that you have sold some surfaces. Good. Well done. But you know what? The iPod Touch and the iPhone have just shipped their 37 millionth unit. That is a hell of a lot of multi-touch, gesture based interfaces out there. Good Luck with the Surface but perhaps media manipulation is NOT the way to go. Cleaning up bad press is an approach but this is the Internet shut stuff away in a box and it will come back to haunt you.